Love and Respect For God

“I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory. For this reason I kneel before the Father, …” Ephesians 3:13-14

This is a curious segment of scripture. Briefly, there is the connection between what Paul had just been writing about (salvation in Jesus) and the discouragement his friends felt at his suffering. In fact, suffering *for* them. I may come back to this. But for the moment, I am drawn to Paul’s prayer.

I am struck by Paul’s description: “I kneel before the Father.” Kneeling is an act of respect and submission. Father is a term of family and connection.

As much as bold and confident access that we have with our Father God (see my previous post), he is worthy of worship and honor. Seriously, God is to be literally (really literal, not fake “literal”) worshipped and given unshared highest honor.

That is, while we have access to our Father, there ought to be nothing flippant about our relationship with him. We may, in fact, be even angry with God and express that fully and with great vigor. But eventually (if our relationship is healthy), we calm down recognize our loss of perspective and move on.

Just as we should respect our good earthly fathers, no matter how good our relationship with them is, we should not only be loving to our parent but also respectful. Both love and respect are important to healthy relationships. With our relationship with God, our closeness and intimacy (that has become a ‘weird’ word in the early 21^st century) still do not diminish God’s place and role as Creator and Judge.

I am reminded of my friend whose father was a major executive of a big corporation. When my friend worked in the mailroom during the summers, he occasionally would deliver mail to his dad’s office. He had “privileged access” to that office that even direct-report Directors did not have. For my friend, Dad was still Dad; he was hardly ever Executive Vice President Mr. Smith. But that didn’t mean my friend would address his dad in any context using a nick-name or “Hey, you!” Good relationship, instant access, and lots of appropriate respect.

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I can seek out God’s presence, but I cannot treat him as if he were not God. While I am human, the apex of God’s creation, God still remains God!